


The one that felt like they said it should

by redsnake05



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-16
Updated: 2010-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-09 11:31:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/pseuds/redsnake05
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot of things burned away with the shell of Tom Riddle, but some things stay with him. Some things really did feel like others said they would, and Tom can still remember one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The one that felt like they said it should

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss Morland](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Miss+Morland).



A lot of things had burned away with the shell of Tom Riddle. Some had gone with his first attempts towards immortality, and more had been lost when he lost his corporeal body the first time. For a while, it had seemed that all he had left was the spirit of malice and hate and the tiny, clinging vines of his anchors to this world. Getting a body again, stretching out into a skin that fit, for once, that was shaped for all the things he wanted to do, he had found it was empty inside. _I Am Lord Voldemort_, he thought. _Let me fill up all these spaces with vicarious pain. _

He crammed experiences into his new body, learning all those sensory cues again through the harsh curve of a body wracked in pain in front of him, from the shiver of fear in the eyes of one of his followers. When his wand was in his hand and someone was aching, burning, gasping for the respite of death... then he found relief from the emptiness. He took in all their terror and pain, red and black and jagged, twisting between them and him. It was nearly a tangible thing, sometimes, a cage of begging words to trap a life in.

Some memories came back to him. Some never would, and he just poked at the holes they had left, letting the missing parts niggle at him like a broken tooth, letting them fuel his hate and rage.

Some memories had never left him. When it was dark, in the still of the night, he let himself think of them.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

He hated the way she looked at him. Hebzibah's eyes slid over him in a mix of avarice and lust, like Tom was one more thing to be added to her collection. The look was admiring, and Tom couldn't help but play up to it a little. He was a master of this game, but he forgot the rules, occasionally, when her fingers slid over his wrist, or she glanced at him sideways with those eyes.

No one had ever looked at Tom as if they wanted to own him before. No one. No one had ever cared enough to want to keep him, so he took them instead. But her... she was all about taking and having and possession.

"Tom, this is exquisite," she purred, lifting her eyes from the necklace that he held in his hands to his face. The look in her eyes was hungry, and he tried to keep his mask of smooth politeness in place. "Bring it closer, let me touch it," she commanded, and Tom could hear the undercurrent in her voice, _come closer, I will touch you. You are mine._

He had trouble keeping his eyes clear, trouble seeing her as she was in reality, short and wrinkled and as false as the fake diamonds draped over his fingers, twinkling bright in the candlelight. When her fingers touched the gold chain that snaked cold over his hands, he could imagine it was honest.

"You are something special, Tom Riddle," she said, looking up at him as he ducked his head and averted his eyes. Her fingers were soft on his chin, tilting his head up so she could see his face. He was sure there was confusion there. It couldn't hurt to let her think he was shy, and her laugh was a delighted thing, full of anticipation. "Am I the first to tell you that?" she asked.

"You're the first for a lot of things," he said. His voice shook. Just part of the game, this is what she wants, his mind supplied, and he felt better. He could play it, he had played it. There was nothing special about this. He was not unused to playing the charming, inexperienced boy, ripe for corruption.

"I'm glad, Tom," she said, touching his hand, fingers sliding off the gold chain and onto his skin. He licked his lips, hastily, watching her watch his mouth. He knew what she wanted, he did, it was what they always wanted. But. But she had an edge of dominion to her voice, and something in Tom responded without his conscious control.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

There were things Voldemort knew he had missed about having a body. When he watched the games his followers played, he felt that longing only dimly. He smiled at Bellatrix, licking her lips in anticipation, eyes dark and gleaming with predatory intent. Bella had always liked the young ones, the ones who would let her play, who would believe in her and her laughing red mouth full of promises like ashes. When Bella beckoned her latest pet forward, he watched.

The girl crawled forward willingly, and his mind supplied the details; Bella slipping into her cell, healing the bruises and cuts she herself had inflicted earlier, mouth moving around lies and false reassurance. _I can help you, we can escape together, I have to do this, I don't want to hurt you, I don't like hurting you, I love you, I can help you_; a steady stream of low-voiced promises that were as easy as the tears that sparkled on the ends of the girl's lashes.

Bellatrix took her time with her pets, and this one had gone nearly as far as she could be taken. She kissed her way up Bella's thigh, hands cuffed behind her back, naked and scarred and still clinging to the illusion:_ I can help you, we can escape together_. When she licked over Bella's clit and Bella tipped her head back and moaned, throaty and satisfied, he watched.

He didn't want this anymore, it wasn't something this body was made for. But he watched as the girl licked and sucked and brought Bella to climax, then he watched again as Bella held her face into Bella's cunt and made her do it again. He let the girl's desperate hope and Bella's cool calculation and vicious sadism weave a tapestry of futility and hate to wrap around his shoulders, since he had few memories from which to make his own blanket.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

When she showed him the locket, he knew what he had to do. He knew, and dropped his eyes quickly, least she see the trace of lust and want and hunger in his eyes. He had decided long ago to put his faith in objects, and the locket was something solid and concrete he could wrap his fingers round and heft in his palm, feeling the weight of it real against his skin.

But her eyes were real too, and she was looking at him with that combination of ownership and lust that made him shiver and shift uncomfortably on his seat. The locket could be his, he could nearly taste it. Then it was gone, and he was blinking after the House Elf carrying it through the door.

"Did you see something you liked, Tom, dear?" asked Hepzibah. He saw his way to the locket; through her lust to own him, he would wrap his fingers in the real and tangible, and forget all that might be or could be in the unpredictability of people.

"I always do, when I'm in your house," replied Tom. He meant it to be arch, confident, but it came out a little shakily, like a breathy whisper. He looked down at his hands and then peeped up through his lashes at Hepzibah. It was a classic move, for an innocent boy ripe for corruption, but it felt uncomfortably close to the true mirror of his confusion and doubt. He hated that, trying to hide it under a slow, careful smile that stretched over his skin tight and painful.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Some days passed without anything to distinguish them but hate and pain. He knew he'd once had direction and purpose and more to him than this half-empty shell and the stubborn, clinging tendrils of life. So he took life, where he could, and dispatched his forces in a mixture of slaughter and strategy. Pureblood, pure purpose, even when he felt his own certainty waver on the inside.

He was seldom alone, entertaining himself desperately with prisoners and their pain and anguish, or his followers and their hate and fear. The haze of their emotions rose to choke him, but he breathed it in, deep like cigarette smoke. It settled in his lungs, deep and persistent and cancerous, eating away at him, till he feared being alone even more. His memories blurred, inorexably, one by one by one.

But one lingered, impossible to shift. It was the one that felt like other people said it should, even through the long haze of denial and perversion.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Hepzibah's hand on his jaw was soft, insistent, turning his head to the right angle and easing him forward into a kiss. He had done this before, a few times, as a way to stake a claim or gain an advantage. His body and his beauty were tools to use, for intimidation or the consolidation of power, and occasionally for the heady power of a lesson taught. But Hepzibah handled him like he was a porcelain figure from her case, to be stripped bare and lovingly inspected, and kept for a place in her collection. Close to her, within the touch of her clever, greedy fingers.

He opened to her kiss, letting her move him as she wanted. He surprised himself with how he wanted her to move him and use her control over him. He let her tug him down on top of her, cradling him close against her body and directing his fumbling fingers to remove their clothes. She smiled at his blushing and reassured him, always with that fine edge of ownership to the twist of her lips or the tone of her voice.

When she eased him to his knees in front of her, the kisses he pressed to the tender skin on the inside of her thigh were shaky, laced with the desire to please. He wanted her to like him and own him, and the cold glitter of gold faded from the forefront of his mind, displaced by her sighs of encouragement. When he drew back, finally, and she smiled at him, he could hardly recognise his reflection in her eyes. He looked away, past her to the little cabinet in the corner where she kept her chief treasures. The lure of gold, solid and real in his hands, grew stronger, stronger than his need to please Hepzibah and feel her wrapping him in chains of possession.

His cock ached under his robes, untouched and desperate. Hepzibah sprawled against the sheets in languid bliss, clearly not interested in giving him anything. The familiar desire to take rose up in him, choking him, fierce and bitter alongside his lust and desire to belong. With every moment of her sated silence, he felt her attention slip from him, and he took what was solid and reliable.

Tom drew his wand, looking away from the woman on the bed. Before, when he had killed, he had looked, wanting to see that moment of comprehension before the endless blankness of death. But he couldn't look this time. He kept his head down, safely averted, until she was nothing more than meat, spread out on her sheets in a final moment of contented ownership. A lazy, post-coital smile slowly solidified as her body cooled, and he raised his wand again to shear off another fragment of his soul.

The pain seared through him, sharper and harder than it had felt the first time, and he felt it peel free and linger at the end of his wand. Crossing to the cabinet, he removed the locket and recited the charms needed to bind his soul into the metal, safe and secure there, cradled in the tiny fragment of gold. He closed his fist around it and looked back towards the bed. Hepzibah lay on the sheets like a broken doll, and Tom felt distant from the boy who had knelt between her thighs and wanted her and her greedy fingers and knowing smiles.

He left her there and walked out into the night.


End file.
